Me, a pureblood prole, one of the new posh?

Welcome to the new posh. Same as the old posh. We won’t get fooled again. Unless it’s painted in some muted Farrow & Ball non-colour. For the new posh is ubiquitous.

It is now the Government and most of the Opposition. Some wear it well. Cleggbama does, though I do so wish the man would stop talking as if he is in a leadership debate ALL the time.

Others have yet to come out of the posh closet. Ed Balls, for instance, doesn’t like to be reminded of his school­ing. Especially for Labour types, poshness of any kind must be tempered by ‘authenticity’, which is code for a working-class veneer.

Thus at the end of David Miliband’s campaign video, an elderly woman insists sweetly that she loves him.

She is the anti-Gillian Duffy. The idea, of course, is that anyone with an accent and grey hair is truly working-class. And this is 2010?

Social mobility? Pull the other one. We don’t even understand that regional accents may not connote trouble at mill. Anyway, pureblood prole that I am, I was alarmed to find myself teetering on the verge of poshness because I know what prosecco is.

I don’t just know – I bathe in the stuff! And I eat houmous. If it wasn’t for my lack of interest in horses, sailing or opera, I could almost be posh.

Obviously, the above are just indicators of alleged poshness from some dumb survey. But it strikes me as odd the way the truly posh are playing down their good fortune – while others are desperately aiming to have supper instead of dinner.

The vulgarity of the Bullingdon Club has been something the Tories wanted to close down discussion of. Ayia Napa/Bullingdon excesses are really not so different.

Instead, we now have a more subdued poshness. The economic crisis means we disdain the excesses of Eighties-style Thatcherism, unless of course the wealth in question is Russian – then it can be as blingy as hell. Now we have to do ostentatious austerity. Surely this was part of the reason David Laws had to go.

The coalition has meant ­opposition is confused and ­politics is less tribal and class-based. Some of this is laudable, but a mind-meld of upper-­middle-classness is now in power.

Nice manners, big kitchen, government by Boden. It’s all for the good of everyone. If only poorer people could be as nice to each other as this in their ­little ‘communities’, things would be so much ­lovelier!

It’s like a dream. When old class warriors like Dennis Skinner pop up to randomly abuse the overlords, it feels like cheering a sad old bloke on Britain’s Got Talent, not because he can win, but because he has the gumption.

The new poshness is the real break with Thatcherism and its loads-of-money showiness. It’s quietly assured of its taste, its suppers and private education. The clones who now wish to lead the Labour Party are from similar backgrounds.

So they also tend to believe that though Britain is not broken, it would be a lot better if poorer people behaved much more like middle-class people.

It’s just a question of how to get them to. Schools are one way and Labour has not managed it. Academies run for profit will, of course, be selective and mimic private schools in every way.

Those who fail to make the grade will be further disenfranchised. And this is the problem: not that privileged people are running the country – but that the values they want to imbue into the less well-off are meaningless.

The depressed on incapacity benefit, the huge numbers of young unemployed black men, the girls who see no chance of arranging childcare so that they can work. Do those at the top understand the closing-down of such life choices?

Now I see a ruling class not just devoid of women but of working-class people. Maybe it’s all post-ideological and we are all posh now. Some say it’s all new.

After the crash we needed major political realignment. And this is what it looks like: a table full of very similar men deciding whether we can have jam today or jam tomorrow. Jam served, of course, with little silver spoons. Is there any other way?

Vultures gorged on tragedy

I have nothing to say about the tragic shootings in Cumbria. Except this – it’s not about taxation or gun laws or community breakdown or any of it.

So, I don’t want to read any more of those endless analysis pieces by ‘experts’ who know as little as the rest of us.

Psychological profiling is a bogus science where people make a living out of stating the obvious and usually getting it wrong. Killers are often men with a grudge, they tell us, as though this is some major insight.

When women are murdered, we are told their killers are usually sexually insecure and seek to control their victims.

Far too many people appear to have watched crime shows and treat these guys as Cracker rather than as failed sociologists who provide few clues to the police and are simply vultures feeding on horrible, senseless tragedies.

Israel’s actions were wrong, but the mindless condemnation of all Israelis is equally wrong

Many good people there are working for a two-state solution. Egypt has opened its border with Gaza but the surrounding Arab states do little to relieve the suffering.

At the Erez crossing I saw just how difficult it is for a Palestinian family to cross into Israel to get treatment (there is not a single cancer hospital in Gaza).

Most goods get into Gaza through the tunnels: cattle, rocket parts and Tramadol, which people take to numb themselves.

Yet on that trip I also saw the Israeli peace movement, which has still not recovered from Rabin’s assassination. But it exists and, if you care about Gaza, you must also care about those in Israel who work every day to change things.

Plain old Claudia – surely she was fantasy enough

Claudia Schiffer appears blacked up: yes, made to look like a black woman in an Afro wig. Is this offensive when so few black models make it on to magazine covers?

Well, Karl Lagerfeld likes it and this picture was designed ‘to reflect men’s different fantasies’.

Claudia Schiffer sports an Afro wig

So that’s just fine then, as I guess no man has ever fantasized about blonde, blue-eyed, plain old Claudia before.